The coffee is finally done! Why does the first cup in the morning always take so long to brew? Finally, it is really Saturday morning. Thank you Lord. What a week. It just seems that I wasn’t able to please anyone this week. Why do so many things go wrong at the same time? I should have been a history teacher like my mother.

The excited voices that always seemed to be in the air now slowly, involuntarily gained his attention. His attention was moving from self pity and enjoyment of the relief that the weekend gives, to the two small but piercing voices coming from the backyard.

“Let’s play NASCAR.”

“NO…that’s stupid, I want to play Jump-on-it.”

“Okay…I’m first…I see a pile of leaves near a bench.”

The rules say that nobody can start to run before the poor object of pleasure is described well enough that anyone could find it. After that you have 5 Mississippis before anyone can move. The girl looks for clues as to the pile’s location as her brother strains to follow the second rule. At the last second she exclaims, “I see it!” They’re off, and both try to be the first to stomp on the wind-collected, now to be disturbed, delicate small pile of unsuspecting dry maple leaves.

Taking another sip of coffee, his mind turns unavoidably back to the week’s problems. He works for the Country Clerk and besides the usual week of trying to correct errors, serve the public at the counter, and continue the long overdue project of digitizing old documents into the computer, he was told that starting next month they must now issue marriage licenses to same gender couples. The elected boss herself has not said much on the subject, just that they are required by their job description to follow the law. Some of his fellow workers though had thoughts on the matter that they were not shy about expressing.

Another sip.

I can’t sanction this attempt to change what marriage is by taking part in this.

How is it any different from what my kids are doing right now? One wants to imitate adults and play NASCAR without a NASCAR car. The other wants to play a game that is active fun and where you can make the rules.

He smiled at the word “rules” because it reminded him of his best friend and those crazy poker games. By agreement the dealer gets to define the game. Well, if you get bored or want to make everyone suffer because you are down 18 bucks you declare, “Okay. Nines or better, Queen is high card, 1 cent anti, red 4’s and the king of diamonds are wild. Seven card stud of course.”

He continues his reverie.

As our once mortal enemy and head of the Soviet Union moves closer to God through Russian Orthodoxy and back on the right path, the United States appears to have moved from a solid basis for making a workable society that won’t morph into the war and suffering that Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe experienced in the 20th century. We simply have decided that we can now guide our existence alone. Where once we looked to God for guidance as the Declaration of Independence declares, now we look to the most popular among us. We look to our charismatic earthly law givers to satisfy our desire for total control of our existence, when they don’t even have a clue as to why we exist in the first place. High School popularity style socializing continued without any mature oversight. So it makes sense that marriage would become just a pretend activity for those who desire it be changed according to their rules, while necessarily rejecting God as our creator. We have substituted science for God as if science can do more than explain the workings of some of the things God gave us.

He ignored that his coffee had gotten cold while taking an automatic sip.

This recent development is not static, social changes are called movements when they differ from present existence and require argument to convince others. How can we possibly continue along this divergent path away from a recognition of our purpose? Marriage itself will eventually self destruct as we slowly recognize that marriage has become unnecessary and meaningless—like a crazy dealer’s choice poker game.

If love is all there is to it then why not be married to several people? Why not to the whole world of people? Are we not told that we should love everybody? Why not marry an animal? If Evolutionary Biology considers us just another primate that can only be differentiated from other animals by physical characteristics and very limited behavioral ones, like how ancient primates might have acquired their food, then the desire to be married to another animal becomes just an argument regarding legality as the present homosexuality argument has become.

The argument has degenerated into a plea for judges to force the states to issue a marriage license to, at present two persons, because they want to try an legitimize disordered sexual behavior by a small minority of people as if that behavior doesn’t already exist without marriage anyway. The argument goes, that the state should include those persons not for reasons that strengthen marriage, but because those persons want to be included and the reason doesn’t matter. The state should always support personal desires is the judicial principle, even if that means changing the meaning of marriage, and by extension family, for everyone else—the 97 or so percent.

I love some animals. I can buy one, why not marry one? Just another movement. Not impossible just look at Germany?

He finally realized that the coffee cup had served it’s purpose and put it down.

I think I want to seriously consider how I can go back to school and maybe teach history. Maybe study religious history or theology and more sociology. That would be good. I could explain the importance of recognizing a creator in our lives, hopefully before we finally destroy ourselves as we almost did in the last century by ignoring God, ignoring why we were created, and ignoring how we were created to live.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” (Last line of the Declaration of Independence 1776)

H.L. Duncan is a senior citizen widower in his 8th decade of life (70s) who was married for 36 years to his only wife Jill. He lives on 40 acres of the Great Basin Desert in an owner built solar powered home. He has three children who have left the nest and are now too far away. After an Episcopalian childhood, his teen years brought on the disease of agnosticism with occasional bouts of atheism. He entered the Church in 2010 and says he has felt at home ever since.
His working life included Forest Fire Truck Driver, Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa building schools, Motion Picture Cameraman in industrial films and while in the U.S. Army, production assistant to a Producer in Hollywood, Professional Still Photographer, Photo Lab Technician, Postal Service Letter Carrier, Computer Systems Analyst in business and government, Computer Consulting, Owner of an Internet business, Web site creation.
His educational background is mostly self directed reading and experiential but does include; A graduate of the London School of Film Technique, London, England, AA degree in Business Data Processing with an additional course in accounting, Seminars and technical classes.
He now spends his days in local parish church work and Right to Life groups, Internet conversations with new friends and old enemies of the Church.

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CATHOLIC STAND is an e-publication presenting essays and creative non-fiction, offering substantive resources with thoughtful insights into how to live the Truth that the Church teaches, owned by Little Vatican Media.